Transformers: Beast Wars is an action role-playing game released by Hasbro Interactive released on December 5, 1997 for PlayStation and May 31, 1998 for PC. It is based on the popular Beast Wars animated series, specifically the first season, after the introduction of Airazor and Inferno. The game allows you to play as either the Maximals or the Predacons in a series of missions to sabotage the other side's attempts at gaining a tactical advantage in the Beast Wars. There are four playable characters on each side, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses, and they all have both a health meter and an Energon tolerance meter that slowly goes down while in Robot mode (staying in Beast Mode slowly refills this meter); once this meter is empty, the player takes damage from the ambient Energon radiation in the air. If you fail in a mission and the character you're playing as is killed, they can be 'revived' by finding an icon in the level the character died in that will unlock that side's flyer character/s (Airazor and Optimus Primal/Terrorsaur and Inferno), which allows you to 'rescue' the lost character in a short minigame (However, Airazor and Terrorsaur can only be used in the minigame and not the main game).
The game was universally panned by both critics and fans alike, given a mediocre to bad rating by most online reviewers for the game's blocky and textureless graphics, clipping problems, somewhat slippery controls, and horrendous voice acting. However, the PC version of the game rates a bit higher than its PlayStation counterpart for one specific reason: the support of 8-player LAN or online play (the Playstation version took out this multi-player function, reducing its playability severely); in fact, for a while, the MSN Gaming Zone had a series of rooms open specifically for multiplayer Beast Wars matches.
Trivia
During several episodes of the Animorphs tv series the Beast Wars game can be seen.
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May 31, 1998 